Gamescom 2015 has just started, a time when a sizeable portion of the European gaming community flocks to Cologne, Germany for a chance to get a glimpse at the newest that the videogame industry has to offer—which in our case means the latest virtual reality games and gear—and more specifically to me, getting to see the Oculus Touch controllers for the first time.
Oculus Cinema is a first-party VR application that recreates the experience of having your own personal cinema or leather chair adorned home theater. And while it’s great to feel like you’re sitting in front of a massive screen, what fun is it alone? Oculus understands that movie-going is not a solo activity and says that they’re building online multiplayer and social features into the app.
Mindfield Games, a Finland based games studio, have given Road to VR exclusive new footage showing pre-alpha gameplay of their soon-to-launch sci-fi themed exploration VR title, Pollen.
Although the company isn’t ready to release it as a commercial product just yet, Samsung is now soliciting the interest of content creators who might want to make use of their ‘Project Beyond’ VR camera.
It’s an argument I’ve heard time and time again from people who have never used VR. “You look so dumb with a headset on. No one wants to wear something on their head.” Then you give them a headset and they become an instant convert.
Researchers at Stanford University have unveiled a prototype VR Headset which they claim reduce the effects of VR sickness through the use of an innovative ‘stacked’ display which generates naturalistic light fields.
Virtual reality hardware has set something of a trend at trade show awards over the last few years. Oculus in particular have traditionally cleaned up in the ‘best hardware’ category at shows like CES for example. Now it seems to be the turn of HTC’s SteamVR powered VR Headset the ‘Vive’ as it receives a nomination for ‘Best Hardware’ at this year’s Gamescom awards.
Past winners and nominees include the Oculus Rift DK2 (winners in 2014), Sony’s Project Morpheus (nominated that same year) and the Cyberith Virtualizer VR treadmill. Oculus walked away with CES 2014’s overall ‘Best of CES’ award for it’s DK2 predecessor the Crystal Cove feature prototype.
You can find the rest of the show’s award nominees over at the Gamescom awards page here. HTC are at Gamescom demo’ing the Vive to attendees who were lucky enough to snag a slot during registration which opened a couple of weeks ago.
Road to VR are at Gamescom all week bringing you the latest news from the show floor.
Frontier Developments just announced a new expansion series called ‘Horizons’ bringing with it planetary exploration and a new loot system. Here’s a new teaser trailer to whet your appetite ahead of the expansion’s first instalment’s release – set for Christmas 2015.
Demonstrating the add-on’s ‘seamless’ space to atmospheric exploration system and, more importantly, gives us a (very brief) glimpse of the new Surface Recon Vehicle.
Frontier Developments, creators of intergalactic trading and combat title Elite Dangerous have today announced a series of expansion packs which will bring planetary landings and will offer new crafting an looting systems.
Pollen from Helsinki based developer Mindfield Games is an immensely promising ‘Oculus Rift Optimised’ story driven adventure set on Saturn moon Titan. The title is coming to Gamescom again this year and the studio has released this new screenshots ahead of the show.
At GDC Europe 2015, Autodesk has announced that their new Stingray game engine will launch worldwide on August 19th. The engine will support the Oculus Rift VR headset out of the box.
Gunjack is a quite gorgeous looking turret-shooter for Samsung’s Gear VR headset. The game is set in the EVE universe, that of developer CCP Games’ Eve Online. As an arcade-style shooter, players can collect powerups as they fend off waves of enemies. The game will launch with the consumer version of Samsung’s Gear VR which CCP affirms will come this fall.
August 14th kicks of the SHVR Vive Jam, a collaboration between HTC and the Shanghai VR Meetup to bring teams from across China for a weekend of rapid prototyping room-scale VR experiences for the SteamVR platform. Road to VR signs on as the official media sponsor of the SHVR Vive Jam and will be on-site to bring reports from the event in Shanghai.
